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From: ian@mva.cs.liv.ac.uk (The Best is Yet to Come)
Newsgroups: comp.society.women
Subject: Re: women in engineering and science
Message-ID: <6714@ecsvax.UUCP>
Date: 15 Mar 89 20:21:09 GMT
References: <6647@ecsvax.UUCP>
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In article <6647@ecsvax.UUCP>, ceide@bbn.com writes:
> I've recently read many things which prompt me to ask: 
> How many succesful women software engineers, mathematicians,
> and so on were encouraged as children by their *fathers* in
> maths and sciences?

I think that parental encouragement can easily be outweighed by other factors.
My sister and I were both encouraged by my father to take an interest in maths,
and we were both about as good as each other, given our ages (she's two years
younger than me). However, when my sister went to secondary school (age 11), she
went to a single sex school where arts were encouraged in preference to sciences
(the school said maths was a science, I don't agree with that, but ...). Thus,
my father's encouragement was overshadowed by the school's academic preferences,
and my sister is currently trying to get a place at a drama school.

This is of course only one possible reading of the cause and effect, my sister
could have simply lost interest in maths or she could have subconciously
rebelled against my parents. Obviously, my father wasn't going to force her into
a subject she didn't seem to want to do, and he let her continue following more
arts-based subjects. Maybe the maths teacher at my sister's school wasn't very
good (I know I was put off history by the teacher). I'm just saying what
happened, you can draw the conclusions!

Ian Finch              Janet: ian@uk.ac.liv.cs.mva
---------              Internet: ian%mva.cs.liv.ac.uk@cunyvm.cuny.edu
                       UUCP: ...!mcvax!ukc!mupsy!liv-cs!ian
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